King's Quest V: Absence Makes The Heart Go Yonder Multimedia
King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder Multimedia was Sierra's second MPC CD-ROM games (after Mixed-Up Mother Goose Multimedia). It was released in 1991. It added new windows support, and also included EGA640 driver which converted VGA to 16 color EGA. Background Sierra's most richly cinemagraphic animated adventure ever. The royal family of Daventry is missing, along with the whole castle! Join King Graham on a perilous journey to rescue your loved ones. Aided only by a talking owl named Cedric, you'll face the mysteries of the dark forest, scale precipitous mountains, cross a scorching desert and an ominous ocean as you try to find the royal family. It's a contest of strength, wits, and magic between you and the evil wizard Mordack. Close your eyes and hear the screech of a harpy, a wizard's incantation, the battle cry of a king. Imagine your faithful companion Cedric calling out a warning in the nick of time. King's Quest V multimedia is an amazing experience. In the CD ROM version of King's Quest V, the characters come to life like never before! With the talents of over 50 voice actors, Daventry will seem as real as the world outside your front door, and just as close. Every character has depth and individuality. The stereo soundtrack and realistic sound effects pull you into the heart of Daventry. Live this latest King's Quest adventure to the fullest. King's Quest V Multimedia is the benchmark for computer gaming. It has all of the plot and action of the original game, and the character enhancement is incredible. More dialog has been added, but the text boxes have been deleted. When you talk with a character, you get more than just a closeup. The character's face has more expression and animation, and his speech is fully lip-synched. He could be sitting across the table from you. Content The major change was the addition of a fully voiced cast, starring Sierra's own employees or relatives. It added in new digitally-recorded sound effects in places as well (or adapted them from earlier international or Amiga releases). Adapting some of the changes introduced in international floppy releases (see French version) and Amiga version the CD-Rom streamlined the interface removing the extra walk icon, and moving the save features, and stop/exit button into a seperate menu. The magic wand copy protection was removed as it was considered unneeded at the time as Sierra believed the size of CD-ROMS would make piracy more difficult. The larger character models for the ant, rat, and bee were cropped along with all the other characters, and given brown wooden borders. Each character has its own colored background for their character portrait. The cropped characters lack incidental animations they had in the floppy version such as their hands or antenna in the case of the insects. Some new character portraits appear for some new characters. The subtitles have been removed, and characters only talk through their character portraits. Recorded orchestral digital music replaces some of the synth music from the earlier releases. This appears to be lower quality recording of the MT-32 music. It's an upgrade for those who only had access to a sound blaster, but a bit of a down grade to those with MT-32 available. The CD-Rom version also has new larger animated full-color cursors for on screen action. New content includes the Weeping Willow's song, and the Ant's song, talking towns people, the snake has a few lines. The script was also rewritten somewhat giving various characters accents, or other additional lines. See KQ5CD transcript. A few details were added to the CD-ROM version of the game, and a few details were removed. The various townsfolk talk, whereas they ignored him in the disk version, "The people are too busy to spend much time talking to Graham". The snake talks, saying "Ssstay away, thissss isss my path", in the original, it just said, "This snake has a menacing look which Graham should heed". The ants sing March of the Ants and Willow sings the Weeping Willow's Song. There are a few minor changes to other dialogue for example, the cow is described as a "pretty cow" in the floppy version, and a "spotted cow" in the CD-ROM. The snake death is different. In the original, it just said something like, "Watch out for those critters, Graham." but in the CD-ROM version, it says, "That wasn't wise, Graham. He who speaks with forked tongues should never be trusted." There may be other expanded or changed death narrations. Some of the Easter Eggs from the floppy version do not work in the CD-ROM version. Versions *First Release (December 1991) *Second Release (April 1992) *Fujitsu FM-Towns (July 1991)https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=46057 References Category:KQ5CD